REASON: The Amy, Vicky, and Andy Act Is Signed Into Law

Excerpts from the SOURCE

On Friday, President Trump signed into law the Amy, Vicky, and Andy Child Pornography Victim Assistance Act of 2018 (AVAA). The Act will help victims of what are frequently referred to as “child pornography” crimes obtain full restitution.The Act helps to resolve a thorny legal issue about how to provide restitution to victims — an issue that was addressed in a 2014 case I argued before the U.S. Supreme Court with co-counsel James Marsh, Paroline v. United States.

Since the Paroline ruling, federal trial courts across the country have struggled to operationalize the Supreme Court’s command to “order restitution in an amount that comports with the defendant’s relative role in the causal process” — and for good reason. If (as seems quite likely) Amy is victimized by tens of thousands of viewers of her images, it may be next-to-impossible to assign some specific causal role to any particular defendant.

From a practical point of view, with regard to restitution litigation the most salient feature of the new law will be the $3,000 fixed minimum amount. This minimum ensures that child pornography victims will not receive a token aware from any particular defendant.

FAC COMMENTARY:

So the ACT (a copy of which can be seen here: https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/2152/text) sets a minimum amount of restitution a CP offender must pay ($3000) so that the restitution cannot be said to be negligible, but it also caps the amount a victim can collect to be the aggregate of the full amount of the victim’s losses.

It further caps amounts based on the culpability of the Defendant in the crime.

(1) not more than $17,000 on any person convicted of an offense under section 2252(a)(4) or 2252A(a)(5);

(2) not more than $35,000 on any person convicted of any other offense for trafficking in child pornography; and

(3) not more than $50,000 on any person convicted of a child pornography production offense.

The ACT is not something new. it merely sets a minimum amount (and maximum).